The 14th Century, In Particular
by katilara
Summary: Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rockhard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times he thought briefly of the fourteenth century then it was utter surety that he would come out on top that the universe w


**A/N:** Written for the Atomic Fiction challenge on LiveJournal. Aziraphale/Crowley. December 1348.

Atomic Prompt:  
_You speak of signs and wonders  
But I need something other.  
I would believe if I was able,  
But I'm waiting on the crumbs from your table_

* * *

To say that things sucked for AJ Crowley would be sweeping a planet sized demon under the Oriental rug. France really wasn't working out as well as he hoped. The king hadn't been responsive to Crowley's wiles since his wife died and Crowley still couldn't figure out where that damned plague was coming from. And the angel! That was another story all together. It was like he didn't even care about thwarting anymore, which was throwing a major wrench in The Arrangement. All things considered, Crowley was feeling more like a pestery child being ignored than a demon. And while pestery children gave the demon a certain amount of happiness, this feeling did not. So far, if he had to number the centuries starting with his favorites, the fourteenth would be last, right behind the tail end of the Ice Age.

In an attempt to take his mind off things, he had spent increasingly more time visiting with various rulers in their country palaces and promoting gluttony like it was going out of style. (Which it might, if everyone died.) He had just sat down at his desk to pen a letter to Edward III thanking him for the weekend get away, when there was a knock at the door. "Well, sssspeak of the devil."

"I am not," started Aziraphale as Crowley opened the door and allowed him in, "a devil. Nor am I a lesser demon, a representative of parliament, or a particularly dodgy _ferrour _."

Crowley smiled. It was good to be home. "Nice to see you're still yourself then angel, I hadn't heard from you in months. I was beginning to worry that I'd never be thwarted again."

Aziraphale sat down in Crowley's desk chair and eyed the letterhead, furrowing his eyebrows. "Worry? About me? When you've got a plague to continue spreading. Please, don't let me take up so much of your time."

"What?" One side of Crowley's sly smile dipped lower. "I'm not responsible for this, angel! You know I don't go in for death and destruction. I'm more of a 'let's build a private palace with public funds' kind of man!"

Aziraphale slowly shook his head back and forth. "I'm going to be blunt here because I've come to like you." He glanced up at Crowley who had started to smile again. "Don't get too excited. I'm here because my side knows where that plague came from and I'm supposed to bring you in for a hearing about the whole thing. You know how Gabriel gets when he can take credit for someone else's findings. He's practically giddy to get his hands on you."

"I know he's practically giddy to be elbow deep in my feathered pants, and that's all I know," Crowley grumbled. Only in heaven would a rebuffed coworker derive pleasure from being forced to see the person who had turned them down over and over again for millennia. Crowley secretly hoped that the humans would never get to that point. "And what is this about _knowing_? _I_ don't know, and it's all I've been working on for years!"

"You mean," said Aziraphale, grasping at the arms of the desk chair, "it's all you've been working at for years besides corrupting public officials and collecting presents." He eyed the piano in the corner of the study pointedly. "What did you do to get _that_?"

"Oh, nothing really, just promised old Philippe a dynasty. Funny, those mortals. Don't understand that you don't really _get_ a dynasty until you and a lot of other people are dead." Aziraphale shook his head again. "I can't help it if people appreciate my work! Besides," Crowley shrugged, "its fun to play."

Aziraphale smirked. He secretly enjoyed Crowley's work _and_ his piano playing. "No, you can't, and now you've got the attention that you work so dutifully to achieve. Please, just come with me. Please don't make this hard. Think of The Arrangement."

Crowley, still standing at the door, put his hands on his hips and leaned forward. His eyes shone in a way Aziraphale hadn't seen since the garden. It was hope and desperation and irritation. "There won't be an Arrangement if Gabriel gets his way. His wings have been knotted since I fell. I thought you were-, I thought we-, I thought you were above this angel."

"Above following orders? My dear, just because I misplace one flaming sword doesn't mean that I'm suddenly playing for the other side."

"Just tell me where it's coming from! It's bad enough your side figured it out before I did. You don't have to come by and hold it over me for the rest of the century."

Aziraphale blinked. He was hurt that Crowley would think that this was what was happening. "It's the rats."

Crowley's voice pitched. "Rats?"

"Yes, the rats, on those trade ships that bring them goods. Those trade ships that bring you tea." How dare Crowley accuse him of being anything but the best friend the demon had ever had! "You just _had _ to have the God damned tea."

"Angel, such language," Crowley admonished, waving one finger at Aziraphale. His eyes flashed again, this time with something akin to glee.

"What?" Aziraphale asked, ruffled. "It was, He condemned it in 1015. I'd have figured your side would have gotten the memo."

Crowley blinked. "Oh, that's what I wrote that list of opiates on." He walked over to the desk, leaned over Aziraphale, and began rummaging through the drawers. Small pieces of yellow paper with words burned into them instead of written began to fall out over the floor. "There's got to be some memo shaped rubbish around here somewhere."

Aziraphale raised his eyebrow and crossed his arms. "Maybe you should check in _la poubelle_." France irked the angel, and he never wasted a chance to remind Crowley.

"No matter really," Crowley shut the drawer and leaned over the angel, his breath ghosting Aziraphale's neck as he talked. "I'll have you drinking it yet."

_ This_, thought Aziraphale, _is quite enough now_. "Crowley, please don't waste time. I need to get back, with or without you. I'm giving you the chance you see, to get away."

"Without me then," he said. He pulled back from the desk chair and looked down at Aziraphale. He had the sudden urge to touch him. It was one he'd been fighting increasingly over the past fifty years. "Don't try and find me, yeah?"

Aziraphale watched him walk to the door. Crowley had closed it behind him before he could make a sound. Aziraphale felt like parts of his body were seceding. Unfortunately, his tongue was on the side of the revolt. "I never do," he said finally.

Crowley walked. He walked the fifteen kilometers into Paris and he walked up and down the snow slushed alleys tripping over bodies and damning rats. He would have damned the tea, but since it had apparently already been damned, he didn't want to overdo it.

"It's not my fault," he whispered to the dog licking its owner's hand. The quiet bore down on him. "It's not my fault!" he yelled to the city.

"Ferme ta gueule!" someone yelled back. The two echoes mingled for a moment before finally dying out.

Aziraphale hated France. He had had to move all of his books when they came here. Moving books, even for a principality, is a pain. And why was he even here? He was here because Crowley had convinced him that they were needed more here. But from what he could tell, it was England who needed the help. What they really needed here was a demon that could play the piano. They did not need an angel who collected odd versions of The Bible.

The one good thing about France was that only about twelve people in Paris could actually read any of the texts in his shop, including the three that were actually written in French. No one tried to buy any of his books. Aziraphale sighed and put down the new copy of _The One Mystic Gaelic Bible _ that Crowley had brought back to him from his stay in England. Every picture and letter was hand drawn by a monk in a dripping stone monastery. The actual good thing about France was Crowley, and the demon must never know. There would be no end to the wiles.

"Finding that ussseful?" Crowley breathed into his ear. Aziraphale fell forward out of his chair. "Sorry," the demon said, standing up again. Aziraphale only ever saw Crowley sorry around him. It was endearing.

"No dear, not at all." Aziraphale stood. "Em, Crowley, what did you do to the bell?"

The demon grinned. That flashy grin that made Aziraphale hate him in a way that was nothing but love. "I silenced it. It always did get on my nerves."

Aziraphale smiled back at him before lowering his tone. "You know they're still going to want to see you."

"Aren't they all knowing or something? Can't they already see me?" Crowley made a rude gesture at the ceiling.

Aziraphale suppressed a giggle. "Sit down, and don't touch anything. If you get plague on my books and someone actually buys one of them, we're all going to hell."

"I thought I was already there." Crowley grumbled, before sinking into the chair opposite the one Aziraphale had been sitting in. He looked about the room while the angel bustled about in the kitchen. There were so many books, and none of them began to describe his friend. Crowley decided to start bringing him more, especially ones that weren't Bibles.

Aziraphale came back in with two glasses. The one he placed in Crowley's hands had a warm, creamy liquid in it. "Here, drink this, I find it soothes the nerves."

Crowley hesitantly raised it to his lips. It was amazing. The angel had found a way to ruin tea. "Milk, Angel? That's just disgusting."

Aziraphale sat back down opposite him and smiled into his own cup. "I suppose you could say you detester it."

"Angel, no more French. You're not allowed." Crowley reached for one of the Bibles stacked on the table. "I'm sure it says so somewhere in one of these. Thou shalt not butcher other languages."

Aziraphale sputtered. "I can speak twelve other languages just fine. I don't really need this one." He looked down at Crowley's fingers on the cover of the book. "I'm only here because of you."

Crowley looked at the book and then put it back precisely where it had been. "I know." He swore again to himself that it wasn't his fault. "Angel, why do you, you know…thwart? Personally I mean."

Aziraphale placed the cup on the table and leaned forward so that his knees were almost touching Crowley's. "I don't know. It's what I do I guess. If I didn't there wouldn't be a reason for me to be here. And then I'd be in an office somewhere hiding from Gabriel, and there would be no books, and no milky tea, and no…" He leaned forward onto his elbows, clasping his hands so that the fingers hovered just over Crowley's thighs. "No demons."

Crowley smiled and slid back in his chair so he could lean forward without bumping foreheads. "And here I thought you were going to call the whole arrangement off."

"No, but I would like to request one small change."

"England?"

"You know they need more help in this war than the French do."

Crowley smiled again. The flashy, bastardly smile he had perfected in the last century. It had driven several courtesans and a priest mad. "Maybe, not that Phillipe has done a whole lot with the help I gave him. I set him up completely in 1346. Gave him money, recruited, and what did he do? He lost a whole bunch of men. Humans."

Aziraphale let his fingers drop and rest on Crowley's leg. "J'adore."

Crowley grimaced. If The Arrangement was going to continue, this _had _to stop. "Angel. I'm telling you. Hell. Fire. No demons."

Aziraphale looked up and caught Crowley's eyes. He traced his finger down the inside of Crowley's thigh to the knee. "Je t'aime."

Crowley rolled his eyes. The angel had a lot to learn, and Crowley had the rest of their time on earth to teach him.


End file.
